Running Government Like A Business

FEMA tapped Tiffany Brown, an Atlanta entrepreneur with no experience in large-scale disaster relief and at least five canceled government contracts in her past. FEMA awarded her $156 million for the job, and Ms. Brown, who is the sole owner and employee of her company, Tribute Contracting LLC, set out to find some help.

Ms. Brown, who is adept at navigating the federal contracting system, hired a wedding caterer in Atlanta with a staff of 11 to freeze-dry wild mushrooms and rice, chicken and rice, and vegetable soup. She found a nonprofit in Texas that had shipped food aid overseas and domestically, including to a Houston food bank after Hurricane Harvey.

By the time 18.5 million meals were due, Tribute had delivered only 50,000.

For months, residents begged Puerto Rico’s power company and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to bring back their electricity — with few results.

So the people of the town of 40,000 — high in the mountains of southern Puerto Rico — have started restoring power on their own, pulling power lines from undergrowth and digging holes for wooden posts in a do-it-yourself effort to solve a small part of the United States’ longest-running power outage.

We have trillions of dollars to fund endless wars, and a Congress that went out of its way to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy. But the same federal government has abandoned Puerto Rico.